tographed,--yet he is the sign of the decadence, the symbol of decay.

For all costumes are caricatures. The basis of Art is not the Fancy
Ball. Where there is loveliness of dress, there is no dressing up. And
so, were our national attire delightful in colour, and in construction
simple and sincere; were dress the expression of the loveliness that it
shields and of the swiftness and motion that it does not impede; did its
lines break from the shoulder instead of bulging from the waist; did the
inverted wineglass cease to be the ideal of form; were these things
brought about, as brought about they will be, then would painting be no
longer an artificial reaction against the ugliness of life, but become,
as it should be, the natural expression of life's beauty. Nor would
painting merely, but all the other arts also, be the gainers by a change
such as that which I propose; the gainers, I mean, through the increased
atmosphere of Beauty by which the artists would be surrounded and in
which they would grow up. For Art is not to be taught in Academies. It
is what one looks at, not what one listens to, that makes the artist. The
real schools should be the streets. There is not, for instance, a single
delicate line, or delightful proportion, in the dress of the Greeks,
which is not echoed exquisitely in their architecture. A nation arrayed
in stove-pipe hats and dress-improvers might have built the Pantechnichon
possibly, but the Parthenon never. And finally, there is this to be
said: Art, it is true, can never have any other claim but her own
perfection, and it may be that the artist, desiring merely to contemplate
and to create, is wise in not busying himself about change in others: yet
wisdom is not always the best; there are times when she sinks to the
level of common-sense; and from the passionate folly of those--and there
are many--who desire that Beauty shall be confined no longer to the bric-
a-brac of the collector and the dust of the museum, but shall be, as it
should be, the natural and national inheritance of all,--from this noble
unwisdom, I say, who knows what new loveliness shall be given to life,
and, under these more exquisite conditions, what perfect artist born? Le
milieu se renouvelant, l'art se renouvelle.

Speaking, however, from his own passionless pedestal, Mr. Whistler, in
pointing out that the power of the painter is to be found in his power of
vision, not in his cleverness of hand, has expres